“I’ll tell you what keeps him back,” said Bob, reining his horse up to a dead stop, that Archie might hear him all the easier.
“I’ll tell you what keeps him back now, before you see him. I mustn’t talk loud, for the very birds might go and tell the fellow, and he doesn’t like to be ’minded about it. He drinks!”
“But he can’t get drink in the Bush.”
“Not so easily, though he has been known before now to ride thirty miles to visit a hotel.”
“A shanty, you mean.”
“Well, they call ’em all hotels over here, you must remember.”
“And would he just take a drink and come back?”
Bob laughed.
“Heaven help him, no. It isn’t one drink, nor ten, nor fifty he takes, for he makes a week or two of it.”
“I hope he won’t take any such long rides while he is with us.”